Remarks as delivered in Times Square after the President’s speech follow:

“Before I take some questions, let me just
start out by saying how glad we are that President Obama came to New York City to make his
case for financial reform.

“As you know, New York
City isn’t just the biggest marketplace in America, we're also the very center
of the marketplace of ideas. From art to architecture, from publishing to
politics, if you have an idea to share – or to sell – New York City is the place
to do it. And so we welcome the President to New York today and we hope he comes back next
time he wants to make a case for something.

“Now I do agree with the President that we
need real reform of our financial industry – and it needs to be the right
kind of reform that won’t put New Yorkers out of work and hurt our country and
our City’s long-term economic future. The financial services industry accounts
for some 500,000 jobs in our City, and the typical worker in the industry is
middle class, with a salary of about $70,000.

“I agree with the President that there is
no dividing line between Main
Street and Wall Street. The reality is, we have our
own main streets here in New York
City – in all five boroughs. There’s a Main Street in
Flushing, there’s a Main
Street on the South Shore of Staten Island, there’s a
Main
Street in Edgewater in the Bronx. There’s a Main Street in Brooklyn and on Roosevelt Island. There are main streets in every
neighborhood across our city, and to one extent or another, they all depend on
Wall Street’s success. As the President said, the success of Wall Street
and Main
Street in our city – and in our nation – the success
of both of them are inextricably linked; one supports the
other.

“The financial services industry is made up
of people who live and work in our neighborhoods and who shop on our main
streets. So if regulation and higher taxes lead to fewer jobs on Wall
Street, that will mean fewer jobs for middle class communities across the
country.

“My concern is for the police officers and
firefighters, teachers and sanitation workers, and everyone else who lives in
our neighborhoods, shops on our main streets, and keeps our City strong. They
get paid by the taxes that the financial industry
generates.

“We need to reform banking regulations so
that investors – including Wall Street banks – can assess the risks and value of
derivatives. Establishing a public exchange for trading derivatives I think
would improve the transparency and stability of the market. It’s
critically important that we don’t prohibit companies for employing the most
modern and creative techniques for growing our economy and our housing supply.
An open public exchange would enhance America’s competitiveness in the market and bring
more jobs here from London and Tokyo and around the
world.

“For me, transparency is not just something
I support – I’ve lived it. I spent part of my first career at Salomon
Brothers, and all of my second career as an entrepreneur, finding ways to build
transparency of information and markets.

“Now there are other elements being
discussed in Washington that would be steps in the right
direction as well. I absolutely agree with the President that we need
stronger consumer protection in the financial services industry. In our
City, we have very robust consumer protections – many of which we have enhanced
over the last eight years while I’ve been in office – and they work very
well.

“Giving one agency – instead of the current
seven agencies in Washington – the job of protecting consumers
would strengthen enforcement and accountability. In the same way that the
proposals would move consumer regulations under one roof, and as we are trying
to do in our City, we need regulatory agencies that are based on business
practices, not industry structures. Investment banks and commercial banks
and insurance companies and hedge funds are in different industries, but they
are all engaged in the same kind of business. However, currently they’re
regulated by different agencies with different rules and have different state or
congressional oversight.

“But some steps being discussed in
Washington
would move us backward. Making the President of the New York Federal Reserve a
presidential appointee, rather than an appointee of the Fed’s board of
governors, would politicize the job. And the last thing that we need at the New
York Fed is partisan politics. And requiring entrepreneurs and early-stage
businesses to file reports with the SEC that would impose compliance costs that
would make it harder for them to succeed, stifling innovation and costing us
jobs is not a great idea.

“Other proposals would also lead to job
losses. Limiting the size of financial firms would lead companies to move jobs
overseas. We already have anti-trust laws that deal with companies that may grow
too powerful in the marketplace – and where applicable, those laws should be
enforced. They are not always done so now.

“We need American regulations to be
coordinated with international standards, or else foreign firms will find it too
costly and too difficult to do business here, and our jobs will move
overseas.

“Another regulation that would drive
business overseas is the proposal to prohibit firms from engaging in proprietary
trading. Banning it would not stop it, but only send those jobs to
London or Geneva
or Shanghai.
Proprietary trading is one of the many profit centers that financial
institutions use to make money, and they depend on those profits to carry them
through unprofitable periods in the loan business. We all depend on access to
loans to build houses and schools and hospitals and all businesses – small and
large. Every industry needs access to capital – that’s the basis of our
entire economy. If we limit banks’ ability to make money, we reduce the
amount of lending they can do – and that will hurt all of
us.

“The President is right: we need new
regulations. They need to be smart regulations, consistent with
international standards, supportive of access to capital, conducive to creating
jobs, and good for every street in our
country.”